Original subtitles

DISTANT SCREAMS

WOMAN: No! No! No! No!

WOMAN: Unlocked. Please!

PANICKED VOICES Here!

He tries once to kill himself and then take her with him...

Here.

..and he fails.

RAHEEL:

Raheel attempted to commit suicide

and take her out the window with him.

RAHEEL:

So the next time, he makes sure there's no mistake.

He had one intention in mind and that was to kill Sania.

It kind of felt unbelievable that someone so positive

and liquid sunshine can be just snuffed out.

In South Asian households,

even if there's oppressiveness or abuse,

women are told, "Tough it out and stick with it."

Well, Sania Khan's story is known around the world.

She was an avid photographer and had gone viral on TikTok

documenting her journey getting out of an abusive marriage.

She was absolutely considering divorce at that point.

Sania's messaging about her decision to leave her abusive relationship

was getting to about a million people.

It's naive to think that he would not see those.

They're a direct and public humiliation of him.

He's shown that he is capable of being an extremely dangerous man.

POLICE OFFICER:

I felt that...

my soul left my body.

You know? Believe me.

I felt that something left me, you know?

It came from here and then it left.

It's July 17th, 2022,

and it's the day before I fly out to Chicago

to see my best friend Sania - Sania Khan -

and we're going to move her home.

I'm really excited about moving home, dude.

I'm really excited.

We're gonna drive a U-Haul down from Chicago

and bring her into our home that we rented and picked out together.

But anyways, babe, I will catch you later.

Love you.

She's excited to come back to Chattanooga

to start on a new foot.

I was on a high.

And I decide I wanna skate.

Sania's booked my flight.

I'm just getting really giddy about seeing her.

Sania is sending me voice memos.

SANIA LAUGHS

She doesn't wanna pack.

She's way too excited, she has way too much energy to pack.

Seeing Chicago from the aeroplane,

it was beautiful.

I get on the train not knowing where I'm going really.

I know Sania lives in the main part

of downtown Chicago.

I'm a little nervous at this point.

It's not like Sania to leave me hanging.

It really worries me.

I'm trying to call Sania

and I'm trying to sending, uh,

send her a message.

But, uh, she's not replying.

I'm sending messages to Sania's phone

and I notice that her messages are turning green instead of blue,

which on an iPhone means that she's not getting my messages.

Either her phone is turned off,

not charged, or they're not being read somehow.

Then I call my daughter, Eman.

I get a message from my mom.

She's worried that my sister's not responding.

I just kind of brush it off, um,

because my mum is kind of known to be a little over protective.

So, Gabriella is currently on the train...

..and she sends me a screenshot of a message

from Sania's sister that says:

"Do you happen to have Raheel's phone number or Sania's address?

"It's an emergency."

And I'm thinking to myself,

"Why are people talking about Raheel right now?

"Raheel's not supposed to be there.

"They're going through a divorce."

The point when a woman decides

to leave a controlling man

is the single most dangerous time

in that woman's life.

And that's the fear we have on this night for Sania.

I call 911 here in Chattanooga,

they connect me to, um, Chicago 911

and I try to tell them that, you know,

I'm worried about my daughter, I can't find her.

I get the call from my mom...

..and... SHE SIGHS

..all I hear is just screaming and crying from her.

That was the worst moment in my life.

SHAZIA: We moved to Chattanooga in 2001.

Sania was about eight. Eman was four.

We loved the weather and my kids loved Chattanooga.

Chattanooga, Tennessee is a very small town

in the Southern region of Tennessee,

right on the border of Georgia.

This was in Atlanta.

Chattanooga was Sania's favourite place.

She was a very cute, friendly, kind of bossy kid.

She... she was the leader.

She wanted to lead.

She was happy, always dancing

and she always wanted to be in front of the camera.

EMAN: Sania was everything I wanted to be.

She was my first role model.

She was my first friend.

I would say that she's, like, the opposite of me.

She's so extroverted.

She just saw the good in everything.

Honestly, I was so blessed to have her as my sister.

I felt so proud to be her sister.

Sania and I met at school.

Immediately felt like a best friend.

I developed an interest in playing in bands.

And in doing photography for those bands.

She was also getting into photography.

# Five, six, eight. #

She would take photos of me playing.

Sania was excitable.

She taught me to let go a little bit,

and have fun and be a girl

and dress cute and do all those things.

Sania was a little rebellious at teenage years.

We struggled with her.

She wanted to wear whatever she wants to.

Um, she wanted to go parties.

It's hard to raise South Asian kids here in this society.

But we take our kids to the mosque,

we show them our culture.

Tinder was just becoming a known thing,

and, um, I had come home from work one night

and she said, "Oh, I got on Tinder,

"you should make one too." Cos we were both single.

And when she showed me Raheel

she said, "And I think I actually like him.

"He's gonna go to medical school.

"He's got a great family".

And that's what she was looking for.

When she started dating Raheel, um, she felt pretty excited

because she knew that her parents were going to love him.

South Asians still view marriage as a means for upward mobility,

safety and security, particularly for the woman.

That's why when you meet somebody who's perfect on paper,

say they were becoming a doctor,

they're the same religion as you, even from the same community as you,

that's somebody you wanna hold on to.

But Raheel was not what he seemed.

There was a bunch of lies and deceit

that he kept hidden beneath the surface that was just...

..uh, matter of time before it all came out.

POLICE RADIO CHAT

DISTANT SCREAMS

WOMAN: No, no, no, no!

Please!

Unlocked. Please. PANICKED VOICES

Here.

In the beginning of December 2021,

Raheel was on medication.

He started getting very, very stressed out

because of studying, because of medical school.

I think he was not making very good grades.

So they put him on the anti-depressants.

He attempted to kill himself and her

by throwing them both out the 20th-floor apartment.

'They then secure Raheel

'and then he was transported to Northwestern Hospital

'where he received in-patient treatment

'over the next three weeks.'

My very first impression of Raheel was he's got aspirations,

he's brown,

he's handsome.

They have, like, meshing personalities.

Like, everything just seemed perfect.

Raheel had said that he is from Alpharetta

which is just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

And it's-it's known that people from that area

are upstanding families and individuals.

Sania was not one to chase a man because of his money.

But him presenting himself in that light,

of course, that looks comfortable

and that looks safe for the long-term.

Sania was in Chattanooga,

Raheel was two hours away.

So the times that they shared together were short

and based in fun.

SHAZIA: I'd met Raheel and, um, he seems like a good boy.

Uh, he was respectful, he was, uh, charming, happy

and he said that he was gonna be a doctor.

He had two sisters, Mom, he didn't have a dad and, uh,

most of all he knew Urdu.

Obviously he knew the culture.

We used to go to, uh,

amusement parks together.

And honestly, at the time,

um, I thought he was a good fit for Sania.

In 2015, Sania graduated

with a double major in women's studies and psychology

from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

But the one real passion Sania had from when we were kids

was always photography.

TIA: The very first time I met Sania was our first day of school.

And she talked about how she loved photography.

She was planning on doing it professionally.

I became a flight attendant

and I was just telling her

how she could be a flight attendant and do photoshoots

at the same time. She could do that everywhere.

So she ended up being a flight attendant

and did that for a while.

She could travel and she could have photoshoots with people

in all these different places.

And just live that adventurous life.

SHAZIA: And then she realised that she wanna do photography

as a profession.

As she evolved in her photography,

she just got better and better and better...

..and she was able to display that on her social medias.

And she leaned into South Asian weddings

and engagements and parties and she just took off.

As a person of colour, there's not much photographers

that even understand how to take pictures

and get lighting and things right

for our skin tone.

So she really wanted to focus on that

and it inspired a lot of people.

I knew of Sania, I lived across the street.

I would see her around doing photography at events.

I think with the rise of social media

it's becoming way more common

for a woman to become a photographer.

Especially within the South Asian community.

She got into photography, TikTok.

Now, TikTok's a platform where people can...

People realise that they can get on it and be themselves.

They don't have to put themselves in a box.

Some women, who are models,

actually prefer a woman who's a photographer

rather than a male... within the South Asian community.

Every single post would have...

It was, like, basically a journal entry.

You could tell that she spent her time writing those.

Part of Sania's personality

was being a very generous, giving person.

A lot of people safeguard their knowledge,

but Sania wanted to share tips and tricks

and didn't see anybody as a competition

or something to be beat.

I'm a make-up artist and Sania was an incredible photographer.

And we were so excited to create art together.

That was our dream was to travel and do travel photoshoots.

It got to a point where she realised, "Yeah,

"this could be my goal."

Then this could be her long-term career.

During that time Raheel was studying for the MCAT,

which is the big test to get into medical school.

Romantically, personally, things were still the same.

They're only having weekends away.

No big, firm plans for the future.

She was beginning to ask him questions

about, "Well, when are we gonna get married?"

And he would tell her,

"Oh, well, after I graduate from medical school."

Or, "After I pass the MCAT."

But none of those things were happening.

He wasn't able to pass the MCAT.

And Sania started to doubt the future.

But it turns out Raheel's

not gonna be able to make medical school.

He is going to settle instead

for a physician's assistant programme.

She gave him the ultimatum

of we need to take this next step forward,

and it seemed like he wasn't ready to take that step so they had...

..a brief break-up.

And I believe that is when he decided...

..that they were gonna get engaged.

The ring? Yeah, again.

In the video of the ring,

Sania was excited to have this amazing future with him.

But the reality of their relationship was...

was different.

The first time I knew there was something going on

was when she wanted to talk she was like, "Hold on..."

And would go outside to talk on the phone.

So that's when I was noticing,

"Why? Why are you leaving the room?"

She was like, "Oh, I don't wanna bother him.

"He's studying or something."

But I said, "This is, like, borderline controlling".

We were all hanging out and he decided to FaceTime her.

And I just didn't love the way he spoke to her.

It did feel like more of a check-in,

like, "Hey, what are you doing, what are you up to?"

And there was a lot of red flags, I would say.

In South Asian households

conflict arises when women are told that even if there's, uh,

oppressiveness or abuse within that household,

they're just told to tough it out and stick with it.

Men are given the sense of entitlement

over their female counterparts

because they're seen as sort of this bread winner.

Despite everything, shortly after the engagement

Sania throws herself into preparing for that big, fat Pakistani wedding.

I wanted to have a good wedding for my daughter.

So this is the house where I lived five years and, uh,

it's a beautiful house.

And Sania did not want me to do it.

But then I had no choice, and obviously I had to downsize.

South Asian weddings is a competition.

It's all about who can throw the bigger wedding.

It always gets more grand and extravagant and lavish.

The run-up to the wedding, and she was just worried about

how the family's gonna behave and everything.

It comes with a lot of stress to plan these weddings.

And the last thing you want is for anything to go wrong.

Her wedding was actually the talk of the town.

Yeah, the wedding took place in, um, Hyatt Regency, Atlanta.

It's right in the middle of downtown.

She was so stressed out.

She was getting mad for no reason.

She thought that everything's gonna be messed up.

The wedding itself,

it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen

in my entire life.

There were... The lighting was so nice.

Flowers everywhere.

Her dress was gorgeous,

hand-crafted just for her, um, shipped from overseas.

Everything was perfect.

But about halfway through

we see Raheel stand up with his sword

and stamp it down into the ground

with a really, like, mean, angry look on his face.

He liked to have a sword.

South Asian culture, the groom have a sword.

Sania's dad was supposed to be sitting next to her,

but her uncle was sitting next to her.

And Raheel had some beef with the dad and the uncle.

Raheel got really mad.

His eyes were, like, really, uh, wide open and red and, you know,

and he was holding the sword

and he was just pushing it up and down like this.

But then later on, Sania told me that he was mentally unstable.

So he was not able to control his anger.

So the move to Chicago happened right after the wedding.

He got selected for Northwestern, which is a very prestigious college.

They found an apartment in the city area of Chicago.

She thought it was gonna be the big dream,

but they were struggling financially.

Didn't seem like they were living the, the young, hip,

fresh couple in the city.

It didn't seem like that at all.

They started having problems November, December of that year.

We would kind of FaceTime together

and Raheel was never there.

He was always, uh, studying and Sania was always bored.

And lonely.

Several things were unravelling.

Sania is... was massively independent

and was beautiful at hitting her stride

and marching to the beat of her own drum.

She was still wanting to wear what she wanted to wear to go out

and have her successful business.

And for somebody like him that'd be a very frustrating thing.

On top of the fact that he's failing at his life goal

of becoming this upstanding doctor.

It all came to a head when he hit a mental break

and attempted suicide.

RAHEEL: None of this is real.

SANIA: Yeah, he's been doing... Oh...

Raheel tried to jump out the window

and he tried to either take Sania with him or push her out.

I'm like, "If he's that crazy you need to leave now,

"don't wait, get out of there."

OK, there you go, right there.

July 2022,

things between Sania Khan and her estranged husband Raheel Ahmad

are coming to a head.

Sania is planning to move out of her apartment in Chicago

and make the drive back home to Chattanooga with her friend.

Raheel Ahmad visits his mother in Alpharetta, Georgia.

His sister thinks that Raheel seems a little depressed this day.

But he's been on his medication so she doesn't worry about it too much.

This is the point when Raheel lies to his family.

He says he's headed east to Virginia for a hiking trip with friends.

But he does not go east,

instead he travels north towards Chicago.

From social media, Raheel knew that this was Sania's last night

in Chicago.

That meant that this was the last night

that he could get to Sania alone before she moved back to Chattanooga

and the safety net of her family and friends.

Raheel's sister realised, at noon on the 18th,

that he had stopped sharing his location

through the Find My Friends app.

That Raheel is now in Indianapolis.

And Indianapolis is seven to eight hours north of Georgia,

and three hours south of Chicago.

There's a lot of time to think about it,

to pull over, to turn around, to call somebody.

He had her wedding dress with him and he had that gun in his backpack.

Based on my prosecutorial background,

and there was no doubt in my mind,

that when he made that long trip from Georgia to Chicago

he had one intention in mind,

and that was to kill Sania.

Raheel was in the psych ward after his suicide attempt.

Sania was still trying to make sense of what just happened.

She was still in Chicago, by herself, in the apartment.

I was very seriously just begging her to,

"You've gotta get out of there.

"You need to leave, you need to just come home."

This was a traumatic, stressful thing,

but she also had a strong desire to be a wife

and part of that wife role is to be there to support your husband.

And I think she thought that she was the only woman

who could help save Raheel.

She did go and have a visit with him.

He confessed to Sania that he had been cheating on her.

Even before they were engaged.

When she told me that I was like, "What?"

Like, he cheated on you before the wedding.

When he acted like he loved you so much.

He had also lied about his age.

Initially, when matching on Tinder it displays your age

and his age that was displayed was similar to her age.

But it-it turned out that he was lying about his age

from the beginning.

He made a fake profile of her, a lesbian profile.

Using her images, posing as her,

trying to pursue women as Sania.

It was just really big moment for her.

She was absolutely considering divorce at that point.

How could you not?

Sania had actually seen me going through a divorce

so she knew that, in our culture, how divorce is perceived.

I've seen the backlash from community.

She was double minded, you know?

She didn't know what to do.

But then she did make a decision

that she's not gonna be living with him.

Sania had realised she can actually be very vulnerable

and open about your own personal life on TikTok.

She started talking about her marriage,

her separation, her divorce.

People were connecting with her message

in a way that doesn't usually happen.

Not at least in the South Asian community.

I just remember the first one that blew up, and she was like,

"Dude, people are looking at this.

"That's crazy, like I just... I made this."

She told me, "Jess, you know I was gonna make photography content,

"but this is what the people want.

"So I'm gonna start making divorce content, too."

People were saying, "What is she doing?

"I mean, why is she so open about her divorce?

"Why is she talking about it so much?"

She became almost like a motivational inspiration,

a rock star. Just super woman.

At one point, Sania's messaging about her decision to leave

her abusive relationship was getting to about a million people.

Her reach was incredible.

And she's a trailblazer in this area.

Not only is she getting supporters for her work

she's also drawing a lot criticism from the community at this time.

She created a back-up page,

like a secret page where she could be comfortable

that her family wouldn't find, and she could be free to say and do

what she wanted on that page.

But somewhere down the line, her family found the page

and they were disgusted with her, to say the least.

When she was posting on TikTok she was wearing, uh,

clothes that I don't approve of, you know?

She always liked to get dressed up

and she wouldn't dress incredibly scandalously,

but she would dress in a way that showcased her assets.

You see women from all walks of life,

South Asian women from around the globe

starting to leave messages for Sania

thanking her for the work that she's doing.

Thanking her for being brutally raw and brutally honest.

After things had been finally decided

that she was moving on,

she made the decision to move back to Chattanooga.

When first she told me that she's coming to Chattanooga,

I did not like the idea.

And I told her that it would kill me if she had gone through

the same thing that I had gone through.

I would be in so much pain.

Raheel came back to visit Sania

to maintain closure of the relationship.

He did some sinister activity around the house,

taking the keys, taking her wedding ring.

So Sania no longer felt safe in her surrounding.

It-it upset her, for sure.

Two months after the attack, on February 8th,

she officially filed for divorce.

The moment that a woman decides to leave a relationship

is the most dangerous time for her.

As a lawyer working with abused women, I can tell you

Sania was doing everything that she's supposed to do.

She got a restraining order, she changed the locks,

and she got his name taken off the lease.

But I really wanted her to leave.

She visited me in April.

We loved playing really loud music and dancing,

and singing together all the time, and we just had a blast.

We're going to be travelling together,

we're gonna go to California together.

We've so many photos from that, that whole week.

It was probably the best week of our lives.

The divorce has been filed for.

Part of that graduation to her new life was getting her tattoo.

JESS: She got it on her 29th birthday.

Roman numerals for 28, to represent what she said

was the hardest year of her life - her 28th year.

And also, um, that she lived on the 28th floor

in her Chicago apartment building.

And meanwhile, Raheel Ahmad is back home in Alpharetta, Georgia.

To Raheel, Sania's TikToks would have been intensely provocative.

It's naive to think that he would not see those.

MARIA: They're a direct and public humiliation of him.

He's already given Sania a warning with the attempt at murder/suicide.

He's shown that he is capable of being an extremely dangerous man.

Face my fear. I never faced my fear.

REPORTER: Sania Khan was found dead in her Chicago apartment,

shot to death by her ex-husband.

There's closed connection video

that captures Raheel Ahmad walking through

the apartment complex front doors at approximately 9.30am.

I told her, "Don't be alone in that apartment

"cos that's where he used to live, like, he knows your location."

As he enters the building, he meets a rental agent

who's there to show him different properties.

They enter the elevator.

Raheel's carrying two suspicious items.

One's the backpack, which we know carries the hand gun.

The second is a hang bag, which has Sania's wedding dress.

He gets off the 27th floor.

He's told the real estate agents that he was gonna stay

in the apartment complex to see friends.

And what I notice, as a prosecutor,

is that when he got off the 27th floor elevator,

his backpack was behind him.

But then when he got back on the elevator,

the backpack was now in front of him.

And criminals try and make their crimes as easy as possible.

Raheel wanted to put the book bag in front of him

and then have the gun easily accessible

so that when he got off on the 28th floor,

made his way to Sania's apartment and gained entry,

he could draw that weapon quickly and hold her at bay.

In Alpharetta, Georgia,

Raheel's sister receives an email from Raheel.

In it, Raheel says that he's going to reimburse their mom back

for the money she spent on his tuition.

Immediately she calls Raheel,

but when she can't get through to him, she calls 911.

An officer in Alpharetta, Georgia,

pings Raheel's location on his cell phone.

The cell phone ping itself has limited accuracy,

but Raheel is within 200 feet of Sania's address at the apartment.

BANG

That single gun shot was Raheel shooting himself in the head.

As they gained entry, you can see Sania's lifeless body on the floor

with a pool of blood near her.

Raheel is seated up with a single gunshot wound to his head

and a gun in his hand.

Medical personnel responded.

He was transported, ultimately, to the hospital

where he was pronounced dead.

GABRIELLA: I'm sitting on the train into the city to see her.

We're going to move her home.

And a few of her friends, they call me via Instagram.

One of them sounds very, very scared.

She received a message on Instagram

from what we believe is one of Sania's neighbours

saying how sorry she is about our friend.

And, at this point, we're all freaking out.

All of us.

We start googling stuff because we-we want answers.

And we see that a news report has come up on her block,

but not at her apartment, reporting a shooting.

Sania's father... calls me.

He says, I think, something in the deep part of my soul

that I kind of already knew at this point.

He tells me that there's been an accident

and that Sania has been shot in her apartment.

I'm just counting the seconds till I can get off of this bus

and just lose my mind and breakdown.

And I get off the bus and I just collapse to the pavement

with my suitcase and everything and I just... I'm crying.

And not a normal cry, just, uh...

..it was so, uh, I was so mes...

I am so messed up that cars are stopping

and asking me if I'm OK.

And I'm not.

I get the call from my mom.

She, like, screams, "Sania's dead."

Like, we're all crying.

I felt that my soul left my body, you know?

Believe me, I felt that something left me, you know?

It came from here and then it left from my body.

And all of a sudden I felt so weak.

I've never felt, ever, this before.

And I'm, like, so confused.

I didn't know what to do.

I was so alone and I had to go to sleep alone...

..knowing that my sister...

..has gone and, like, I couldn't do anything.

It's the worst day of my life.

Raheel left a suicide note.

I wanna read part of it for you. He stated,

"I'd come to give her the wedding dress and the gun

"for safety, since she was living in Chicago by herself.

"She and I had a good time together and laughed."

"And for dramatic effect,

"to convince her to get back together,

"I just put the gun to my head and said,

"What's the point of living without you?"

"But she tried to take it away from me, and it went off.

"I can't live with myself

"knowing me being here caused this accident."

"I'm so sorry."

Sounds like bullshit.

MOLLY: There's no justice to be had here

because he ended it for himself.

Makes me sick to my stomach. It still does.

Massive amounts of anger and frustration

of, "How could you?"

And the fact that he sat in that apartment

for a while with her...

..I can't... I can't wrap my head around it.

The question is why did he have her wedding dress that day?

Normal reason would be he was gonna use that token of their love

and wedding to try and rekindle some type of relationship.

But my experience, as a prosecutor, murderers often use tokens

or clothing in order to mark their territory

or have some symbolic gesture in their act.

And I thought to myself that there's a possibility

that he wanted to dress her in that wedding dress

after he had committed this horrible crime of murdering her.

Um, but, uh, we'll never know.

After her death, I went on her TikTok.

Comments were exploding.

All of a sudden it became,

"Why weren't we listening to someone who was talking about her struggles

"and saying that she needed help, was crying for help?"

And nobody... nobody listened up until the point that she died,

and then everyone is saying, "Why didn't we listen?"

Her message is really connecting with women

and South Asian women are flocking to her page

to share their experience

and to thank her for sharing her story.

And these women are from all walks of life

and from all across the world.

The whole thing went viral.

So, after her death,

me and several of her other close friends,

um, decided that we wanted to get something

that would bind us together and also honour Sania.

So we all got the matching tattoo.

Many of her friends got the same tattoo

that she had gotten, which was on her arm.

Everyone got roman numerals - 28.

Except for me.

I got 29.

Because 29 was supposed to be our year.

It was the year we didn't get.

Sania loved her mom so much.

No-one knows. She was the best daughter, believe me.

She wanted me to be happy.

She didn't wanna die.

She wanted to live.

She was actually really excited to be coming back to Chattanooga.

And, uh, she wanted to continue her photography.

She wanted to find love again.

And me, Eman, we are really proud of you, Sania.

We miss you.

Love you so much.

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